Murder on Black Friday Read Online Free

Will dealt his brother last year after learning of Harry’s absinthe-fueled attempt to force himself on Nell—something Viola would never, God willing, find out about.
    “Harry will take this
very
hard,” Viola murmured, staring out the window at her little English-style garden, all tangled and leggy, the way it got every year at the end of the summer, no matter how hard Viola worked on it. “How did he die?” she asked without turning from the window.
    “That’s debatable, as far as I’m concerned. He was found on the front steps of his house on Marlborough Street, beneath the open window of his office on the fourth floor. It seems fairly clear that he fell that distance, but there are no witnesses. He’s got an unwed sister who lives with him, but I’m told she was napping when it happened, and none of the servants actually saw him fall. He was pretty badly smashed up, but in a way that makes me doubt that he died from the fall itself.”
    “I wan out of chalk.” Gracie was standing over her artwork, a stub of chalk in her hand, squirming in a way that instantly put Nell on the alert. “Can I have some more?”
    Viola, who was within grabbing distance of Gracie, pulled her close and whispered something in her ear.
    “No,” the child insisted with an adamant shake of her head. “I don’t need to.”
    “I think you do.”
    Crossing one leg over the other, Gracie said, “I just need another piece of chalk so I can finish.”
    “First the W.C.,” Nell said as she reached for the child. “Then I’ll fetch you some more chalk.”
    “I’ll take her,” said Viola as she crossed the room, wheels rattling over the slate. “You’d best finish sizing that canvas before the glue dries up. Come along, Gracie.”
    “But I don’t—“
    “We’ll stop at the kitchen afterward and have Mrs. Waters make you a nice cup of hot cocoa.”
    Gracie dropped the chalk and hurried after her nana. “Can I wide on your lap?” she asked as she followed Viola into the hall. “Can I? Please?”
    “Can
you?” Viola challenged.
    “May
I?” she implored, while dancing that little telltale dance. “Please, Nana?”
    “Er...perhaps on the way back.”
     
     

Chapter 2
     
     
    Will smiled as he watched them retreat down the hall. There was amusement in his eyes, and pride, and a hint of wonderment at the child he’d created quite by chance one lonely night with a pretty young chambermaid during his last visit to his family.
    It had been a Christmas furlough from his service as a Union Army battle surgeon in December of 1863, shortly before he was captured and imprisoned at Andersonville, along with his brother Robbie. After the hellish prison camp claimed Robbie’s life, Will escaped and, wounded inside and out, and allowed his family to think was dead for years while he lost himself in a numbing haze of opium smoke and cards.
    “What the devil is that stuff, anyway?” Will asked as Nell dipped up another spatula full of warm, gelatinous glue.
    “Rabbit skin glue. Canvases have to be sized with this and then primed with gesso before one can paint on them.”
    “She makes you prepare her canvases? And on a Saturday? I thought you had Saturdays off.”
    “I do,” Nell said as she smeared and scraped. “This is
my
canvas, for a painting I’m planning of Martin and some of his divinity school friends rowing on the Charles River.”
    “Which ones are yours?” he asked, scanning the solarium-turned-studio. The only painting he’d ever seen of hers was the portrait of Gracie that she gave him for his birthday in July, which hung over the fireplace in the little library of his Acorn Street house. It captured Gracie’s winsome charm, which was why she’d wanted Will to have it, but it was sketchier than her usual work, because she’d been trying to suggest movement as the child played with her dolls.
    Nell guided him around the room, pointing out paintings on easels, leaning against walls, and stored in drying